From Jeanne for Congress Campaign 10/13/20:
Ives Continues to Close on Casten
Jeanne Ives has made the IL-06 race one to watch.
October 13, 2020 – Across the nation, Democrat incumbents in the US House of Representative are out-raising Republican challengers 2:1. With most House Democrats reporting over $2M raised in Q3, which ended September 30.
But one incumbent Democrat isn’t feeling the love. In suburban Congressional District IL-06, Congressman Sean Casten is only at parity with his Republican challenger, Jeanne Ives. Casten has raised $1.14 million.
Ives’ campaign has raised $1,137,640.41, with $1,114,340.41 raised by the campaign, and $23,300 raised for Jeanne Victory, a joint fundraising committee with the ILGOP and NRCC.
Casten’s divisive character, self-serving policy-making, and tax-and-spend proclivities have become a major problem in the independent suburban district. He made national news when a video of the Congressman rapping for an audience of supporters surfaced.
In the cringe-inducing video, Casten called everyone who disagrees with him “racist,” and “looney.” He has also said “What voters think should not matter.”
Ives, on the other hand, is a West Point graduate, former state representative and mother of five, who recently earned the endorsement of the Chicago Tribune and the US Chamber of Commerce. She is running on her record of being a straight-talking, tax-fighter with a record of independent leadership.
With clear fundraising momentum, strong performances in their first two debates, a massive following on social media and a robust field operation, Jeanne Ives has made the IL-06 race one to watch.
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While neither 6th congressional district campaign has filed their 3rd quarter campaign disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the fact incumbent Congressman Sean Casten is on the air with at least two negative attack ads against Jeanne Ives only confirms the race is closer than most pundits think.
Both major ratings services (Cook, Sabato) rate the 6th as “Strong/Solid Democrat”. Yet the fundraising, Ives’ two debate victories over Casten, and the fact Casten running heavily negative campaigns in TV advertising reveals a close race.
The FEC filings are due on Thursday, and the following Thursday (Oct. 22), the Pre-Election reports (Oct. 1-14) are due.
McHenry County Blog will share the FEC filings as soon as possible after they are made public.
I like to compare things.
How does the ratio of money going to Casten:Ives compare to how it went to Casten:Roskam?
In other words, it sounds like Ives is on par with Casten.
Where was Roskam compared to Casten?
This kind of lets us know if the 2020 Republican challenger is in a better or worse spot relative to the Republicans in 2018.
Iirc, Hultgren:Underwood ratio was much closer than Oberweis:Underwood which is part of the reason why people don’t seem confident in Oberweis.
Hultgren got outspent but it wasn’t nearly this bad.
Then again I have not seen Oberweis’s latest disclosures.
Casten is a typical cultural Marxist and degenerate.
In short, he’s a danger to himself and others.
Casten’s support is fervid, but his base is rather small.
I’ve been trashing him since he beat the Ros-Scam.
Very thin support among the general electorate.
He’s big with gays and abortion ghouls…. and the teacher-creatures of course but that’s it.
Correcting, comparing 2018 to 2020 is a real apples to oranges comparison, beginning with this year is a presidential election opposed to a mid-term.
Casten was the challenger against a 6-term incumbent congressman makes it apples to oranges, too.
That said, and doing very little filtering, Roskam’s total spend for the 2018 election cycle according to the FEC was just under $7.2 million, while Casten’s was just under $6.4 million (and some of that was for a contested primary).
And those numbers do not factor-in Independent Expenditures (IE) from super PACs and that data is not easy to obtain for a past election cycle.
We’ll have FEC numbers through September 30 by tomorrow, but we do know Casten’s broadcast TV buy he started last month was $2.4 million, for ads to run through Election Day.
We do not know about Ives’ ad buy purchases.
To date, none of the super PACs, including NRCC and DCCC, have reserved TV ad time.
As far as outside money in 2020, Casten has yet to receive any help from super PACs.
Ives’ has received a respectable quarter million in IEs since the primary, but none has been for targeted 6th district TV ads, only digital advertising or mailings.
For an interesting comparison, among Republican first term incumbents, through last week, the highest fundraisers for the 3rd quarter are
1) Dan Crenshaw, raising $5.5 million.
Little surprise, given how high profile Crenshaw is, definitely the Millennial star among Republicans in the House, especially freshmen.
The #2 fundraiser among Republican incumbents is Mike Garcia, having raised $3.2 million for the November rematch against the California assemblywoman he beat in the special election in May.
She raised about $1.3 million in the 3rd quarter.
IEs supporting the Democrat and opposing Garcia evens the money playing field in CA-25.
Most of the ratings services has CA-25 a toss-up, though Sabato rates it “Leans Republican”.
Clearly, Casten is not raising that kind of money, or similar amounts by higher-profile freshmen Democrats in competitive races like Max Rose (NY-11), Xochitl Torres-Small (NM-02) or Joe Cunningham (SC-01).
We’ll see what happens in the next week, as 3rd quarter FECs are made public by tomorrow, and Pre-election FEC filings are made public by Oct. 22.